


I know my kingdom awaits

by kawabiala



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Offscreen character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-18 06:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawabiala/pseuds/kawabiala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: "miles/bass au: miles is left to care for his niece and nephew after ben and rachel die in a tragic accident. reluctantly, miles decides to move back to his home town where he finds as much has changed as has remained the same. Including his once best friend."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the anon who was quick enough to get their great prompt in first!
> 
> Title from "Coming Home" by Diddy-Dirty Money.

Miles came back home two days after Ben and Rachel died. It had taken him time to pack, put his affairs in order and make the drive back home.

Danny met him at the door when he rang the bell. At fifteen, he looked much older than he had last time Miles had seen him, two Thanksgivings ago. He'd grown, but he also looked diminished to Miles's eyes, pale and red-eyed. He didn't look like he'd slept more than a couple hours since the accident.

"Hey, kid," Miles said, and put down his suitcase to put his arms around Danny. For the sake of his nephew's dignity, he pretended not to hear the stifled sob as Danny relaxed into him.

Charlie was in the living room. She hadn't gotten up to greet him, and there was something wary and hostile in the way she looked at him. He could hardly blame her for that. They both barely knew him, and though Danny seemed to trust him, Charlie evidently had more reservations about someone she'd only seen once every other year or so. She had also grown since the last time he'd seen her - she was eighteen now, he remembered.

"Hi Charlie," he said wearily. The drive had taken a lot out of him, and he hoped that any confrontation she wanted to have with him could wait for later.

"Uncle Miles," she said in greeting. To his relief she seemed content to leave it at that.

He was in the middle of unpacking when the doorbell rang. This time, he answered the door. It was a professionally-dressed woman carrying a briefcase.

"Hello," the woman said. "Miles Matheson?"

"That's me," he said.

"My name is Sarah Altman," she said, holding out a hand for him to shake. "I've been named as executor of your brother's will. I'm sorry to disturb you at this time, but there are some issues I need your decision on as soon as possible."

Miles glanced inside. Charlie and Danny were nowhere in sight - up in their rooms, he thought. "Come in," he said, standing aside and motioning her in. "We can talk in the study," he said. He didn't want the kids hearing this conversation.

She set out her papers on Rachel's desk, and Miles took the seat across from her. After a few words of polite sympathy, she got down to business. "I understand that you are the only relative in contact with your brother's family?" she asked.

"Yes," Miles said. Rachel had only had distant family on her side, and he and Ben didn't have anyone else.

"Your brother named you as guardian of his children in his will. It was written four years ago, when both children were still minors, but I doubt the courts will see any reason to change his wishes with regards to Danny. Charlotte is an adult now, of course, but she's still in her final year of high school. It would obviously be disruptive for both of them right now to have her assume guardianship of her brother."

"Of course," he said, still a little numb. He'd already realized that he was the only real possible guardian for Danny - it wouldn't be fair to Charlie to make her take on everything on her own when she wasn't even out of school yet.

"I assume you're still willing to move your place of residence back here?"

"Wait, what?" Miles asked.

"Mr. Matheson's request that Charlotte and Danny not be relocated in event of--" she paused, " _bereavement_ , was described very clearly in the will. I had assumed that he'd discussed it with you?" She was giving him an odd look. He guessed she was used to families who were better at getting their shit together than the Mathesons.

Miles forced a pained smile. "Ben and I... didn't always have the easiest time talking about these things," he said. She still looked a little doubtful, but evidently not enough to dig any further.

She might not understand the message in the will, but Miles did. _You owe me._ His brother's voice echoed in his mind, words he'd never said to Miles but implicit in his last requests. _You almost ruined this family, now you get to take care of it._

It was, objectively, crazy to drop his entire life and move back to his hometown to take care of his dead brother's kids. He had a business, an apartment, a life - if not much of one. But then again, what choice did he have? He thought about Charlie and Danny, suddenly alone in the world. He couldn't leave them here alone, and something in him rebelled against ignoring Ben's explicit wishes and moving them to Chicago, away from their school and their friends - everything they had left.

What the hell, he thought to himself. It beat drinking himself to death in his hole-in-the-wall pub in Chicago.

 

The town bar hadn't changed at all since he'd left - same decor, same barman, same customers. Enough people turned to stare at him as he walked in that he took the booth with the most privacy, where he'd be invisible to anyone not standing directly opposite it.

He was a couple glasses of whiskey into a bottle when a familiar person slid into the seat across from him. Damnable small town, Miles thought. He wondered which of the other customers had told Bass exactly where he was hiding. 

"Hello, Bass," he said.

"Hey Miles," Bass drawled. Miles could tell he'd already had a few drinks. "I heard you were in town again. Haven't had time to catch up with old friends yet?" It was as though more than a decade had disappeared in the blink of an eye, and he was facing the Bass who'd just admitted to sleeping with Emma - with the difference that this Bass didn't seem repentant in the least.

"I don't have any more fiancees for you to fuck," Miles said, the old fury boiling up in him. "So, no."

Bass's eyes narrowed with sudden anger. "You don't get to take the moral high ground here," he spat. "Not after what happened between you and Rachel."

For a second Miles gaped - how could he know about that? Bass smirked, seeing that he had the advantage.

"Rachel told me," he said. "After she'd had a few drinks, of course. You know she and Ben were having problems for years? Ever since you fucked her, if I had to guess."

His affair with Rachel had been after Danny was born, well after he'd left town, when she'd been on a business trip to Chicago. She'd looked him up to say hello, and... well. There had always been a spark there between them, he'd thought, and he'd been pleased to find out she obviously felt it too. Less pleased when Rachel eventually confessed the whole thing to Ben a few months later. Ben had been livid, betrayed and hurt - but the Christmas cards from the kids had kept coming, and a couple years afterwards the three of them finally sat down and talked things out. Or so he'd thought. He hadn't known there was yet another weight of guilt for him to feel over that whole sordid story.

For a minute Miles was back in the past, reliving every conversation he'd had with Ben or Rachel over the past few years - and Bass must have been able to tell, because he gave a small, bitter laugh. "But of course that was different. Ben was your real brother. Of course he'd have forgiven you, of course you and Rachel forgave each other - you were all still _family_."

Miles shook his head, trying to pull his old anger at Bass back up from where it had lived all those years. "You ruined my life, Bass," he said, voice as hard as he could make it. "I lost my fiancee, my best friend, my whole future."

"No," Bass said, and there was real anger there now. "You threw it all away. Emma, me, your future - _you_ were the one who decided to leave. Emma still loved you, _I_ still-- You could have worked everything out, but you were just too much of a coward. In the end you just didn't give enough of a damn about either of us. The only thing that really mattered to you was your own fucking pride."

Miles tried to interject, to say something - exactly what he didn't know, just to deny what Bass was saying, but the words had the force of years of anger behind them and Bass kept talking right over him.

"We were just kids," Bass said. "It was a stupid mistake, and I said I was sorry, over and over. I'm more sorry about it that anything else I've ever done, because it lost me my best friend." His voice broke, and Miles could see the glint of tears in his eyes. "But we were young and drunk, I thought I was in love with her, and I'd always been jealous..."

"Of me," Miles finished, remembering for what felt like the millionth time the looks Bass had given Emma whenever the three of them had been together - glances that in hindsight resolved clearly into longing. He felt the old shame again - how could he have been so stupid?

"Of her," Bass said. He wasn't looking anywhere near Miles now, and he sounded exhausted, broken - like he didn't care what he revealed now. "Because I was afraid that she was going to take you away from me - and because I knew you'd never love me the way you loved her."

Miles felt like his entire world had been turned upside down, feeling a sense of actual vertigo as he tried to take in what Bass was telling him. All that time, had Bass been... what? In love with him? How had he not known?

Bass looked back up to Miles's face, but whatever he found there must not have been what he was looking for. In an instant his face went from painfully open to hard as rock.

"You should go," he said, voice harsh.

"Bass--" Miles began, even though he didn't have any idea what he was going to say.

"Get out!" Bass hissed.

And Miles left. God help him, he knew it was just another instance of cowardice, but Bass wanted him to leave - and he had no idea what to do or say if he stayed.

 

He thought about it back in Ben's guest room, still more than a little drunk. Bass had been in love with him. The thought kept running through his mind, as unstoppable as a flood. Of course it was love - when had Bass ever done anything halfway when it came to Miles? When had he ever done anything without love when it came to the two of them?

With another pang of guilt, he remembered Emma. Bass had been right - he hadn't been fair to her. Maybe they could have worked things out, or maybe not, but he should have given them another chance. After all, she'd been a friend before they'd been lovers... and where had he been when she'd been shot during a house robbery? In Chicago, trying to run away from everything. He hadn't even gone to her funeral. All those years, he'd never given her a chance to apologize, never given either of them a chance to move past it.

He owed her an apology, one he'd never get to give now.

By that same logic, there was another apology that he owed to someone still alive. But how could he give Bass that apology when Miles had no idea how to react to what he'd revealed?

_Bass had been in love with him._

What would it have been like if Bass had come clean with him back when they were still together, before Miles had started dating Emma? How would he have reacted then? He wouldn't have pushed Bass away, he was sure of that. What if... what if they'd actually given it a try? It would have really, truly been just the two of them against the world.

Unbidden, an image came to his mind: Bass a decade younger, looking at him with that open, happy gaze he used to have around Miles, leaning in toward him, pressing their lips together and kissing him deeply. Running his hands through Miles's hair and down his sides to grasp his hips, like he'd seen Bass do to the countless girls he'd used to date. To his surprise, he felt his cock begin to stiffen almost immediately, a small moan escaping him as he imagined those hands reaching down to grab his ass and pull their hips together.

It took him about a minute to come after that, feeling slightly guilty for jacking off in a guest room with children in the house (never mind that it was a concept he was going to have to get used to), but mostly feeling like something had finally slid into place for him.

It wasn't the first time he'd gotten off thinking of another man. Hell, it wasn't even like he wasn't used to the idea of being fucked - between Nora and Kelly, he didn't think there were many kinks he hadn't tried at one point or another. But... Bass? His best friend, his brother? He'd never thought about it before, maybe never _let_ it occur to him before. But that didn't mean that Bass hadn't been thinking about it for a long, long time.


	2. Chapter 2

The day after the funeral, Miles was sitting at the kitchen table, going over the finances Ben and Rachel had left behind, when Charlie came into the room. To his surprise, she took the stool next to his.

"I could have taken care of Danny," Charlie said after a moment, with all the confidence and resentment of an 18-year-old. Miles remembered that phase of his own life way too well. He set the papers aside and gave her his full attention.

"I know you could have, kid," he said. "You'd have been good at it, too." He could picture it: Charlie working a job to put food on the table, making Danny do his homework, getting him ready for the SATs. He caught the look of surprise on her face; she'd been expecting him to deny it. "But you're still eighteen, Charlie." He raised a hand to stop her objection. "I'm not saying that because I think it makes you any less smart or capable. But you deserve a few more years where you don't have to take care of anyone but yourself. I know your mom and dad wanted you to go to college." After a second, Charlie nodded. "Journalism, right?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "I applied to a few schools - I was supposed to start this year. But I don't want to leave Danny now... not even if you're here." Her gaze had a clear challenge in it, even if her anger from before had mostly receded.

"I'm not going to make you go," Miles said. "I couldn't even if I wanted to. But whether you decide to go this year, or next year, or whenever, the option is there for you. You won't have to worry about money, and you'll know that someone's looking out for Danny."

Slowly, Charlie nodded again. She looked down at her hands where they were folded in her lap. "It's just - you left your home in Chicago, your job, to come live here for who knows how long. It just doesn't seem fair to you, especially when we can make do on our own."

Miles reached out and took her hands. Tentatively, she met his eyes again. "This is my home, Charlie. I'm here because I want to be here. And the more time I spend in this town, the more I think that I should never have left in the first place."

Charlie, bless her, had no idea of the warring regrets that were plaguing him. She smiled a wide, shy smile, looking for a second like a girl again. "Thank you, Uncle Miles," she said, awkward and completely sincere.

"That's what family is for." He gave her hands a final, gentle squeeze, and let her go. That was enough heartfelt emotional conversation for one day, he thought.

 

Which didn't explain how he found himself outside Bass's house at 10 pm, a bottle of whiskey in one hand. It had been almost a week since their confrontation, but Miles had needed the time to get Charlie and Danny settled. To start dealing with his assets over in Chicago. To think through some important things.

He walked up the front steps of the house and knocked on the door. He heard muffled footsteps from inside the house, and the door swung open.

"What do you want?" Bass asked. His face was stony, his voice cold.

Miles raised the bottle. "I'm here to apologize," he said. Bass didn't move for a moment, as though contemplating closing the door in his face, but then he turned and walked inside the house, not looking to see if Miles followed him. Miles closed the front door behind him and took the familiar path down the hallway into the small living room. It was the same house Bass had bought after his family had died, right after Miles had sworn to him that they'd be family forever. Bass hadn't changed much around the place - the television was different, but the furniture all looked the same.

Bass grabbed two glasses off a shelf and motioned to the couch and armchair in the living room. Miles took the couch and Bass took the chair. He poured the whiskey and they both knocked back a glass in silence - both of them, he supposed, needing fortification against the conversation. Bass didn't seem particularly eager to say anything, just sat there and watched him, skepticism in his eyes and something like fear in his posture.

"You were right," Miles said, breaking the silence. "I shouldn't have left. I should have given you both a chance to make it right - for all three of us to make it right." He took a deep breath. "I should never have said the things I said to you." They echoed again in his mind, meant to wound. _You mean nothing to me._ "You will always be my brother and my best friend, no matter what happens."

Opposite him, Bass seemed frozen, brittle, like a statue made of ice. "Bass," Miles said, willing him to look him in the eye. Bass's gaze met his, slowly and unsteadily, full of conflicting emotion. "Bass, I'm sorry."

Bass laughed, a sudden, choked sound, and he brought a shaking hand up to his face. "You have no idea--" he began, and stopped as his voice broke. "You have no idea how many times I've wished you were here, saying that to me." Miles gently removed the glass from his other hand and put it safely on the table, clutched his hand as Bass took a few labored breaths, getting his tears under control.

When his breath evened out enough for him to speak, Bass pulled his hand away, avoiding Miles's eyes again. "About... what I said. Is it going to be a problem?"

 _We can pretend that conversation never happened,_ he could say. Bass would be relieved, and if Miles behaved like nothing had changed, eventually he'd believe that Miles had put that confession and everything it meant behind him. And Miles knew that no matter how much time passed, no matter how drunk the two of them got, Bass would never bring it up again.

He couldn't say it. He didn't want to forget what Bass had said. Facing Bass now, he couldn't bear the thought of closing off those feelings behind a door that neither of them would ever have the courage to open.

Bass rose to his feet with another laugh, a tired, ugly sound this time. "Well, I guess I've fucked everything up again. Just like usual." He turned away, moved to escape.

"Bass!" Miles jumped to his feet. He grabbed Bass's arm, not letting go when the other man tried to twist out of his grasp. "Goddamn it, listen to me!" He'd backed Bass up against the wall, the only thing stopping any further retreat. He was tense under Miles's hands, breathing far more heavily than the brief exertion would warrant, eyes wild like an animal caught in a trap.

"I don't need your pity, Miles," he said bitterly.

"That's good, 'cause I don't pity you!" Miles snapped. 

They were both cowards, history had proved that much - but Bass had been brave before in a moment of angry, drunken honesty. Miles owed him some bravery in return. If he tried this and they fucked this up, could they still salvage their friendship out of this? He thought so, and that gave him the strength to continue.

"I didn't know what to say," Miles began, "because a big part of me is hoping that you still feel the same way. And I don't think I'll ever have the courage to tell you if I don't say it now." Bass had gone completely still, eyes wide in shock.

"Miles," Bass said, voice rough, "if you're fucking with me, I swear..."

Miles felt relief wash over him. "No," he said. "God, no, of course not." He felt the exact moment he got through to him, when Bass relaxed under his hands, slumping back against the wall. Miles suddenly became aware of their proximity - the flesh in his grip, their bodies almost touching. He didn't move his hands away. "I can't promise that it'll work, and Charlie and Danny are my first priority now. But I want to try this. With you."

Bass was smiling, that wide, helpless grin that Miles had missed so much. "Jesus, yes," he said fervently. "Yes, I still want that." He raised his hands slowly, as though still not completely sure he was allowed, and rested them on Miles's hips.

 _Fuck that,_ Miles thought, and leaned in to kiss him. Bass responded enthusiastically, which was how he ended up with Bass's tongue in his mouth and a hand in Bass's hair, tangled up in him with barely a conscious thought.

Bass took a hand off Miles's ass to palm Miles's cock through his jeans, and smirked. "You weren't lying about a big part of you hoping I hadn't changed my mind," he said.

Against his thigh, Miles could feel that Bass was just as interested in the proceedings as he was.

"If you want, it can show you exactly how happy it is that you haven't," Miles offered. He didn't miss Bass's quick intake of breath at the suggestion.

"Bed's still in the same place," Bass said.

They didn't make it to the bed. Well, not for round one, anyway.


End file.
